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Was Oliver Twist a child of The Times?

December 3 2011, 12:01am, The Times

Fagin, played in 1968 by Ben KingsleyPathe

A report in this newspaper from 1834 bears a “striking” similarity to the story of Oliver Twist, according to Dickens scholars, and was probably the inspiration for one of the author’s most famous novels.

The court report describes the case of a boy taken in by an older criminal and sent out to pick pockets with a gang of child-thieves. But in a twist to the tale, whereas Fagin in Oliver Twist is Jewish, the “child stealer” on which the character seems to have been based was a 60-year-old black man named Henry Murphy.

On January 14, 1834, The Times reported on the case of Edward Trabshaw, “an intelligent boy, aged 10 years”, who had run away from home and fallen into Murphy’s clutches.